Looking for input...Casper Suite 9 on 10.9 Servers

[Rosko]

Okay, so we are new to JAMF but man have we discovered a lot in the past month and a half of trying to get this beast up and going. Per advise for our contacts at the time we turned up Casper Suite 9.2 on 10.9 servers, we've since upgraded to 9.21, but continue to have a insane amount of issues ranging from slowness with replication of the JDS's, issues with Casper Imaging not block copying the base image all the time, packages failing, errors with "files supposedly not on the JDS's" yet when we physically check they are there... This is a long way from the awesome POC we had with Casper Suite 8 and honestly, we are not happy.

Is everyone else having these issues? Any ideas? Recommendations?

We've been working with our Account rep and Support rep and we just don't seem to be getting anywhere, seems like every issue we overcome brings up a new one or comes back later on. We are at the point where we are considering reinstalling our servers with 10.8.5, but is it worth it? Can someone out there give us some feedback? Should we "rollback" to Mountain Lion? Do we start over completely and go to Casper Suite 8?

We had planned to roll-out a test group by next week, but with all these issues, I am not sure if that is very wise at all.

Thank you for any comments and/or help.

~Josh

[Chris_Hafner]

Well, I'm now happily running Casper Suite 9.21 (Do not run any previous version of 9) on a 10.8.5 server. Unfortunately I am not use JDCs so I can't help there. On the other hand, Apple has been really stabbing their "server" product so that none of us ever make the mistake of trying to use it again. So, while there are still a few bugs in 9.21 I am finding it pretty usable.

[Rosko]

Thanks Chris, I honestly think half our issues are between 10.9 and using JDS's. We did get some help from Apple Engineering today with some of our WebDAV issues as related to the JDS, but there is still a long list of issues yet.

Anyone using the JDS? Either on 10.8 or 10.9?

[spotter]

I have 9.21 running on OS X 10.9 and I'm not seeing any slowness at all. I have experience issues with the block copy during imaging and from testing i found if you delete the device from the JSS no more block copy errors. I'm not currently using a JDS however in a few weeks I do plan to implelment one in our DMZ.

[PF-Admin]

Josh

I was just wondering how you are getting on? I've only just seen this post.

We had our jumpstart in November and I set up 9.21 on 10.9 servers as it seemed the logical thing to do to avoid having to upgrade in future. Especially as I also wanted to run the box as a sus to serve updates to 10.9 clients.

However I've been plagued with issues and haven't been able to rely on the system since it was installed and is still very buggy.

I've constantly had issues connecting to the jds, including not being able to see the share or certificate issues which need the computer to be re-enrolled. I thought 10.9.1 and 9.22 might bring some stability but it has just got worse. Now printing via self service has broken and also the mac fails to restart after installing Mavericks via self service. And then now today Casper Admin suddenly cant mount the distribution point after a reboot.

Frustratingly most of my issues are all things that have been reported on here and the response is that they will be fixed in future versions. However that hasn't really helped me.

I thought this was the king of mac software and I'm sure it is but the experience for me hasn't been great at all. Very very buggy. I guess this was just bad timing as if we had the jumpstart before Mavericks was released we would probably be doing absolutely fine.

Jon

[Chris_Hafner]

I hear you. Unfortunately you folks ended up in a bit of a rats nest. We were one of the first to deploy version 9 (in production) and had to struggle through. As a new customer I am only surprised that you were that nice in your post. Honestly, we've ironed out almost all the bugs and I'm sure they'll get back to normal soon. Most folks are still on 8.7x and running like tops. Honestly, for Mac management Casper is tops in my opinion. You just got the shaft with some very bad timing. Not on your part but on theirs. I came in at the very beginning on version 8 so I had quite a different experience.

Then again, I don't use the new JDS functionality...

[Rosko]

@jonatronic

Unfortunately the printing is a known issue and we are going through that same battle...hopefully v9.23 comes quickly as we are getting close to our launch date. As for JDS's and 10.9, a big part of the problem is Apple leaving out a portion of the WebDAV protocol. We have a case open with Apple Engineering and there is a workaround, but a fix should be released soon ;)

As for all the other issues...we ended up changing our JDS's to regular AFP File Share DP's. Since then we have had a great deal less issues than before. I believe right now I have 4 cases open with JAMF Support and they are all minor with the exception of the printing. But that really seemed to "fix" all our issues. However we do plan to re-visit the JDS platform later in the year, as we do prefer it to the DP.

[Louise]

Hey All!

I am sorry to hear that we have had a rough deployment, Jonatronic. I am not sure what else we might be running into, but the two items in your last post do have workarounds.

For the machines not rebooting after Self Service Mavericks install, can we add a command to force a reboot. We can go into that policy, under Files and Processes and add a command to reboot under "Run Command". In testing, all I had to use was "shutdown -r", but someone here might have a better suggestion for that.

For the issue with the printers disappearing, check out this thread: https://jamfnation.jamfsoftware.com/discussion.html?id=9423

I hope that helps, at least a little bit!

[jhalvorson]

@louise.gizzi][/url][/url, the command should be

shutdown -r now

If you don't include the "now", aka the time, the command won't run.

[Louise]

Haha! I forgot to enter the "+5" that I included in my policy. Sorry guys!

[PF-Admin]

Thanks for all your input guys. That should help to smooth things over a bit.

I think I will move to DP's to see if I have more success there.

@Louise - I have tried adding those commands to restart cups as a script, but the printers still show as failed. It seems to do the restart after each printer thats installed. Any ideas on why it doesnt work?

Executing Policy LDN Brochure Print...
[STEP 1 of 4]
Stopping CUPS...
Mapping Printer Studio_Brochure_Duplex...
Starting CUPS...
[STEP 2 of 4]
Stopping CUPS...
Mapping Printer Studio_Brochure_SRA3_Duplex...
Starting CUPS...
[STEP 3 of 4]
Stopping CUPS...
Mapping Printer Studio_Brochure...
Starting CUPS...
[STEP 4 of 4]
Running script Restart CUPS...
Script exit code: 0
Script result: launchctl: Error unloading: org.cups.cupsd bind(): Address already in use bind(): Address already in use org.cups.cupsd: Invalid argument

[Louise]

I'd have to see the script to know why it might be failing. Feel free to post it here or you could send the script and the error message on to your account manager. They might be able to help out more effectively since they are in your time zone : )

[dwandro92]

We've been experiencing tons of issues with our 10.9 clients, and still have a laundry list of issues to fix before we can deploy the new MBP Retina's we recently received. However, I have been pretty happy with the performance of our JSS 9 server (running on Windows Server 2008 R2), besides needing to occasionally restart Tomcat when the memory usage gets too high. The JSS 9 server has worked great for managing our 10.6, 10.7, and 10.8 clients, and I think at this point the issues lie within OS X 10.9 rather than JSS 9. However, this is just my viewpoint on the subject, and is by no means absolute. I hope Apple fixes a lot of the Mavericks bugs here in the near future.